The Phantomess
by Elena Nightbreaker
Summary: He fled from him, and dares now to return. K for very slight suggestions. E/C.


A/N: AKA my version of what happens after Christine leaves the Phantom during the Final Lair, with the ending changed a bit. Musical universe mixed with book universe.

* * *

"Go now, go now and LEAVE ME!" the Phantom screams, his voice tearing in heartbroken agony. His crazed, mismatched eyes stare into mine.

I whirl around and lift the noose from Raoul's neck. He wraps his arms so tightly around me, it's suffocating, like he thinks I'll float up, up, and away if he lets go. At length, he takes both my hands in his and we flee up the stairs to the surface. The Opera is empty - evacuated - but the cold night outside is a different story. As we burst through the double front doors and onto the marble steps, we are greeted a mob of spectators, with the army and police force at its forefront. "Vicomte!" the chief of police calls. "I must speak with you."

Raoul kisses my forehead and hurries away. Damp and shivering in the breeze, I scan the crowd. Faces blur indistinguishably: women wrapped dark cloaks, men in evening attire and top hats, and police and soldiers standing straight at attention.

"Christine!"

Meg, wearing a pale pink day dress, Madame Giry, in her usual black, and a nurse in a white uniform rush towards me.

Meg hugs me tightly. The nurse shooes her away. "How do you feel?" she asks slowly.

I shrug, eyes fixed blankly on a point over her left shoulder.

"Come, now, Miss Daae." The nurse wraps a knit shawl around my shoulders and guides me to sit on the steps. Meg sits next to me. Each other's company is all we need.

The nurse flutters around me, feeling my hands and forehead asking questions that I answer noncommittally. At last she gives up and flounces away.

I see Raoul and the chief of police talking hotly. Raoul is making wild gestures with his hands as he explains something with a great deal of passion.

Madame Giry is talking, or arguing, with the nurse. "Meg Giry. Come," she snaps.

Meg obeys meekly and obediently, like a lovingly faithful dog to its master.

I'm in a sort of daze now, induced by exhaustion and cold. Mechanically, my right hand moves to my throat. There is no necklace chain. It moves to clasp over my left hand, which is holding the shawl around me at my collarbone. There. The ring. His ring, on my finger.

I jump up suddenly, swaying slightly for balance. Nobody sees me. I slip back into the Opera and to my dressing room. The labyrinthine building is cold, silent, and empty, but it still draws me in.

I slide the mirror back and descend into his lair. I reach the lakeshore relatively quickly and begin to hum a familiar melody. Almost on command, the gondola drifts out of the mist and bumps to a stop against the rocky edge of the water. I step in and it moves away on its own, sliding smoothly across the glassy, onyx lake surface.

My humming shifts to singing. Moments later, I hear a voice in reply. A heavenly, ethereal voice; that of an angel. _His_ voice, a welcome beacon in the darkness of doubt that shadows my conscious.

At the opposite shore, I disembark. Not one candle lights the shore, yet I feel his presence.

"Master," I cry exultantly into the darkness. "I have returned to you!"

"Child. Indeed you have. But will you stay - spend the rest of your life with this abomination? Can you stand it? Will you _survive_ it, dare I ask?"

"Master, I am your's until my heart ceases to beat."

"Yes, yes." A single flame flickers into existence, providing just enough illumination to guide me to the towering pipe organ at which he sits. His narrow form is slouched yet tensed, like a cat waiting, undercover, for unwitting prey to approach withing leaping distance. "Come closer, my Angel."

I comply, head bowed in reverence for the man that might accept me even after what I did to him.

"Child." One skeletal finger trails down my cheekbone and across my collar as his eyes - one deep blue, the other clouded amber - stare calculatingly into mine. He can see into my soul, and I know it. "Child, let me tell you a secret.

"I have lived my life as an outcast, yet once I had an identity. Society has long forgotten it. So much so as to it is hardly mine anymore. But I still keep a grasp on it, keep it under lock and key for the deserving person who has yet to come into my life. Until now. My child, _you_ are the one I have chosen to keep it safe for me after I am gone."

"I am listening, Master. Tell me!"

He seems not to hear me, but continues to speak. "Yes, I have a name. A name that a lover should have whispered tenderly to me in the deepest and darkest of nights. A name to respond to, to write on papers and call my own!"

His hands grace the keys of his organ and a shrieking chord claws its way out. A chord that expresses more wretchedness and pain than words could even approach. His eyes flash and his teeth clench. He twists about in a fit of inexpressible internal agony.

"Instead, it was spoken vehemently by a mother's voice. Full of hatred. My own mother! My source of self, of identity - it became a curse! A curse of something I could not change and now, would not change for the world! What my name has deprived me of my hideousness more than made up for. Until you came along. Erik. I am Erik. You, Christine, child, held more power than you knew or will ever fathom to know! You gave me a reason to remember my identity. Christine, Christine..." His voice trails off, caressing my name with the utmost care.

"Erik. You needn't say any more. I am your's for now and forever." I whisper. "My Angel, my master. Erik."

He turns slowly as I speak his name - his real name! He stands to face me and I lift my face towards his unhesitatingly. "Erik." My lips form the name on his.

And then at last, at long last, we come together in a kiss to rival Don Juan's flames.


End file.
